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How After-Hours Emails Might Hurt Your Health
Technology has allowed many workers to enjoy greater flexibility with where and when they work, but it also means that the boundaries between work and leisure can become blurred.
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Researchers confirm that Americans who always say that they’re “busy” are actually seen as more important
Quartz: “How are you?” “Oh, you know, busy, busy.” So goes a very common conversation in the US. But why, wondered researchers at Columbia and Harvard universities, is everyone suddenly humble-bragging about how busy they are? Just 100 years ago, bragging about leisure, not about how much you work, was a signal of importance and wealth. ... In a series of experiments, the results of which will be published in an upcoming paper, researchers tested whether signaling “busyness” changes people’s social status. Read the whole story: Quartz
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Being Mom To A Middle Schooler Can Be The Toughest Gig Of All
NPR: Although her oldest child, Ben, is 10 years old, Andrea Scher, 44, feels like a new mom again. Scher suffered from maternal depression after Ben was born, eventually recovering with the help of antidepressants and psychotherapy. She was understandably relieved that her depression didn't return after the birth of her second son. But now she's struggling again. Once more, Scher is having anxiety attacks and it's difficult for her to sleep through the night. "At 3 a.m., an electric current of fear shoots through my body, because I worry about my kids and how I am doing as a mom. My nervous system is in overdrive. I can't believe I'm feeling this way all over again," she says.
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How Praise Became a Consolation Prize
The Atlantic: As a young researcher, Carol Dweck was fascinated by how some children faced challenges and failures with aplomb while others shrunk back. Dweck, now a psychologist at Stanford University, eventually identified two core mindsets, or beliefs, about one’s own traits that shape how people approach challenges: fixed mindset, the belief that one’s abilities were carved in stone and predetermined at birth, and growth mindset, the belief that one’s skills and qualities could be cultivated through effort and perseverance.
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Swearing Is Scientifically Proven to Help You *%$!ing Deal
TIME: It has been a long damn year. But you know what studies show may help ease your pain? Swearing. In this era of endless squabbling over what is or is not offensive, a corner of academia has been pursuing the language that we pretty much all agree is not polite — studying the syntax of sentences like “F-ck you” on the same college campuses where students are being safeguarded by trigger warnings. Let some social scientists tell it and the way profanity affects us reveals elements of our nature as evolutionary beings, I sh-t you not. “If you don’t study this kind of language,” says psychologist Timothy Jay, “you’re missing an important part of being a human.” Read the whole story: TIME
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New Research in Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: The Role of Hedonic Behavior in Reducing Perceived Risk: Evidence From Postearthquake Mobile-App Data Jayson S. Jia, Jianmin Jia, Christopher K. Hsee, and Baba Shiv How does experiencing a disaster affect people's daily behaviors? To study this, the researchers followed participants who had experienced the Ya'an earthquake, which occurred on April 20, 2013, in southwest China. The researchers used phone data to examine telecommunications and app usage in the timeframe before and after the earthquake. One week after the earthquake, a subset of participants reported how threatened they currently felt by the earthquake.
